Nurses sleeping at Montreal-area hospital if they work two 16-hour shifts

The West-Monteregie Health Authority is offering Montreal-area nurses from out of the region free accommodation and paid mileage perks if they agree to work two double shifts at local hospitals. Here, Registered Nurse Manjot Kaur Munday, prepares with her PPE prior to visiting a patient at Surrey Memorial Hospital in Surrey, B.C., Friday, June 4, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

Private agency nurses who are desperately needed to fill shifts at a hospital near Montreal are sleeping at the hospital between two 16-hour shifts because they live far away and the hospital can't recruit nurses who live in the area.

Local health authorities also help pay for the mileage of any out-of-region nurses.

It's not a new problem in the West-Monteregie region, the local health board said.

In the summer of 2022, it resorted to offering nurses free accommodation under certain conditions if they agreed to take on shifts at Hopital du Suroit in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, when the impact of COVID-19 on staffing was still acute.

"The placement agencies we work with through the Centre d'acquisition gouvernementale were unable to meet our needs in terms of nursing staff," the West-Monteregie health board explained in an email.

To fill the huge gaps in staffing, incentives were created for private nurses and public sector nurses to help persuade them to agree to travel and also agree to work two double shifts of 16 hours in a row.

They include having their mileage repaid at a rate of $0.54/km if the nurses live more than 50 kilometres away from the hospital and free accommodation in hospital rooms set aside for this purpose.

"This does not change the hospitalization capacity," the West-Monteregie health board emphasized.

The interim president of the FIQ Monteregie-West union that represents nurses in the region said the health board is doing what it has to do to provide health care services to the population.

"It's the lesser evil. Anyone who works 16 hours in a row needs rest," said Maxime Laforge-Steben in an interview. But he said it's a symptom of a much deeper problem in the healthcare system, a problem he lays at the feet of the Quebec government.

"For us, the solution is to improve the quality of the working conditions quickly, and the salaries and that's why negotiations (with the government) are underway."

"The private nurses that do the 16 hours have a better salary than those in the public system," he said.

Fewer than 50 nurses have taken advantage of the incentives, the health board reported, but every extra nurse helps, it said.

Closing a unit in Suroit means the loss of 32 hospital beds, which affects patient care and creates critical overcrowding in the emergency room.

The challenges recruiting nurse, public or private are blamed in part on the remote locations of the hospitals located southwest of Montreal, including Hopital Barrie-Memorial in Ormstown.

"Attractiveness remains a major challenge. Many regions of Quebec share this challenge," the health board said.